“Kurdish people makes a new Kurdish history with music”

Formed in 2015, Istanbul-based band “Danuk” aims to take Kurdish culture to the masses with music. Band members Ferhad Feyssal and Fayssal Macit told about their musical journey.

Ferhad Feyssal recounts Confucius, the
6th century Chinese philosopher, musing that to truly know someone,
one must listen to their music. Confucius noted that ‘if
one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its
morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the
answer,’ and for Danuk, music is a way to spread Kurdish culture
around the world.

Speaking
about the recent interest in Kurds and Kurdish culture, which began
to boom in Europe during the siege of Kobane, Ferhad’s band member
Fayssal Macit pointed at the many misconceptions people hold about
Kurdish culture. ‘Kurdish people are not just
fighters, out of the darkness. We’re not just about ISIS,’ he
says, ‘By the day, we change. We are musicians and artists.’

Ferhad adds that the famed fighters of
the YPG were not always so: ‘they were also normal people, and then
they had to go to war.’ Fayssal completes this sentiment by
explaining that Kurds are ‘not just attacking in the darkness. We
have so many love stories, so many peaceful stories.’

A project based on a love for peace

Danuk as a project is exactly about
those two ideas: love and peace, or rather, a love for peace. The
band formed in May 2015, on the eve of Turkey’s general elections.
‘When we started to make music… the war started,’ says Fayssal.
In a time of conflict between Kurds and the state in Turkey, the band
members fear they can’t play on the streets anymore, something that
Ferhad ‘misses a lot.’ However, playing music on the streets is
how the ensemble met.

‘When we started to play in the
streets, every song, because it was folk [music]... everyone could
listen,’ says Ferhad. ‘Because when you start to make folk, it’s
folk from your culture and your people, but another people are also
feeling with you, taking this energy, loving this energy.’

Ferhad, who hails from Haseke in Syria,
where he grew up in the same neighbourhood as Hozan Osman, met
Fayssal while he was playing on the street in another Kurdish
ensemble. ‘I also had some other Kurdish music projects,’ says
Fayssal, ‘but I thought about [playing] this kind [instead].’
Fayssal, who had played music in Eskisehir, Antalya and Istanbul, was
used to making Kurdish music - but in Turkish.

‘It’s different because Hozan and
Ferhad come from Rojava,’ he says. ‘The Kurdish from Rojava, they
know our language better. They can explain and speak about
philosophic things in Kurdish. In Turkey, the Kurdish people, [we]
explain ourselves in Turkish.’ For Fayssal, the band coming
together was a new beginning for his adventures in Kurdish music:
‘for me, this is most important. When we work together, we work in
Kurdish and we make Kurdish music. For me, it’s such a pleasure.’

Half Turkish, half Syrian

Despite the band members differing
origins - half Turkish, half Syrian - they have found a connection in
one language, Kurdish, and a Kurdish culture spanning the region of
Mesopotamia they all call home. The band’s name derives from a
Mesopotamian custom which Hozan and Ferhad knew well from their
childhood in Haseke. Every winter, friends and families would collect
around the danuk, a pot used to prepare bulgur, prepare a fire and
listen to stories from older members of the community, as well as
songs. After waiting two hours for the danuk to be ready, everyone
would share from the pot and eat together.

The members of Danuk aim to take
Kurdish culture and music to the masses in the same manner. While
they come from different cities, they listened to the same folk songs
as children, hearing the same stories of loves lost or kings fighting
over land in the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia). Whereas Ferhad started
playing guitar when he was 21, Hozan learned buzuq with his sisters
at home from a young age, and Fayssal likewise learned daf from his
father. Gül Temiz also joins the band on mey and zurna.

While the songs they play together
often span from an ancient tradition, the band does not want them to
remain staid. They want to mix and share their Danuk with other
cultures and traditions. While many Kurdish music projects aim only
to preserve folk songs, which Ferhad estimates at only 3000 in
number, Danuk wants to mix the tunes, present them with new
instruments and experiment with the music of other cultures. The one
thing they can’t change, says Ferhad, is the maqam, the classic
melody.

Streets are their goal

Ferhad’s dream of a mixed pot of
Kurdish music finally seemed real when he watched Danuk’s first
promo video, which the band shot over the course of 24 hours.
‘Everywhere is war,’ he says, ‘more people and more songs are
coming to sadness and crying about what’s happened… [but] you
can’t change anything with crying.’ What can change, the band
agrees, is ‘when you have an idea for peace and you want to share
this peace with another people, not just Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic -
anyone… When I saw the finished video clip for the first time I
said… it’s true, we can make beautiful things.’

So Danuk aren’t happy with just
playing concerts in Istanbul. Though right now the band feel they
can’t play together on the streets, with Fayssal having experienced
incidents of anti-Kurdish prejudice in previous endeavours, they’d
like to move outside of their concerts, and outside of the city
entirely. ‘When the peace is coming to Turkey, we want to go on a
tour,’ says Ferhad. The dream is a tour around the country, also
extending to Rojava, with each concert having both the symbolic danuk
of musical mixing and a real danuk to share with their audience.

Despite all their talk on peace and
war, the members don’t consider Danuk a political project. In fact,
they’d rather stay away from politics and get on with making music
with other artists, whether they be from Serbia, Spain or Syria. But
in times of conflict, traditional songs such as the ones that Danuk
play resonate. ‘We have melancholic music also, about history.
Kurdistan was under attack all the time,’ adds Fayssal as Hozan
plays the buzuq. ‘Right now we want freedom. Music is also
political and it’s changing all the time. Kurdish people are making
a new history with this music.’

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